This invention relates to milking supports and, more particularly, milking supports for supporting a milking unit within a milking stall at a height that optimizes tug and pull throughout a milking operation.
Ever since the advent of the automatic milking machine, it has been recognized that the efficiency of an automatic milking operation depends upon optimizing "tug and pull" of the milking unit on the teats of a cow being milked. As a result of this recognition, there have been a variety of proposals of structures whereby the height of a milking unit may be easily adjusted to compensate for differences in elevation of the udders of various cows above the floor of the milking stall, biasing devices for biasing a milking unit in a particular direction relative to the cow's udder, etc.
Representative illustrations of structures for the foregoing purposes may be found in Thomas U.S. Pat. No. 3,624,739, and Thomas et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,605,694, respectively, both of which are assigned to the assignee of the instant application.
While such structures work well for their intended purposes, and indeed, provide excellent results at relatively low equipment cost, because of their economical construction, they do not take full advantage of the fact that during a milking operation, as a cow becomes milked out, there is increasing slackness (or a decreasing tautness) in the cow's udder such that the optimum height of the unit for maximizing proper tug and pull progressively decreases during the milking operation.